After Harvey, Irma, and Maria, many thousands of homes have been lost and lives wrecked. People in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico need decent paying jobs while they try to put their lives back together, and the one industry that will be booming is construction. »

The most important actions by union members this fall are happening on, of all places, the football field.
If other unions are smart, they'll take advantage of this moment. They'll use the fact that every single member knows about NFL players' protests for racial justice, and start conversations in their own locals. »

According to Kroger, sports partisanship on the job is OK but union partisanship is not.
The grocery chain has long allowed employees to wear team jerseys of their choice on designated “game days.” NASCAR and NFL teams are among the honorees. »

New York City-area movers packed up the inflatable rats—all three of them—and declared victory in late August. For two months, while members of Teamsters Local 814 were locked out of their jobs, they had mobilized in the streets to protest a local company’s decision to drop its unionized movers and warehouse workers. »

Corporations are making the most headway on their anti-worker agenda by buying state legislatures, argues Gordon Lafer in his new book, The One Percent Solution: How Corporations Are Remaking America One State at a Time. »

As recently as 2014, just 22 percent of my co-workers were members of our chapter in our big wall-to-wall union. The rest—some 1,242 employees—paid the “agency fee,” which for us is the same as membership dues. The chapter had been defunct for several years. Few bothered to explain to new employees why it mattered to join and what power might come from »

Truck drivers seem to have re-entered the public consciousness in 2017—but today our understanding of the occupation is far from the freewheeling “cowboy of the highway” image of the 1970s. It’s also no longer synonymous with “Teamster” or even seen as a desirable job. »

In August last year Iris Montoya came to work at the Rio Garment factory in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where she had worked as a sewing machine operator for 11 years. At 11 a.m., the factory lights shut off and management escorted the workers outside, locking the doors behind them. »